February 23, 2011

Reality bites

"It's quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters." -- James Taranto

Let's take a gander:

Extreme rhetoric. Protesters put Gov. Walker’s face in crosshairs with the words “Don’t Retreat, Reload: Repeal Walker.” Another held a sign saying “Political Death to Tyrants.” Other placards had Walker as Hitler and Stalin. Still others said “Heil Walker! Stop the Maniac,” the governor was “exterminating union members,” Walker's a “Fascist Union Community Killer,” “Governor Mubarak,” “Midwest Mussolini,” and “al Qaeda Scott.” Massachusetts Rep. Mike Capuano, in "solidarity" with his Wisconsin brethren said"it is time to get a little bloody.” CBS's Bob Schieffer asked, "Is Madison, Wisconsin, the Tunisia of American politics now?"

Violence. Check out what Ann Althouse had to deal with in her reporting on the protests.

In 2003, faced with a new Republican majority intent on redrawing an electoral map that preserved power for Democrats that the voters no longer gave them, the Texas Democrats fled the state. And in 2009, rather than allow a vote on an election security bill that they didn’t want, the Texas Democrats brought the state legislature to a halt — killing the voter ID bill and everything on the calendar that followed it. . . . So the Democrats are trying to bring both houses of the legislature to a full halt to kill the union bill. It may work, at least temporarily, just by running out the clock. But if what has happened in Texas is any guide, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Democrats in Texas have won very little since the 2003 run to the Red River. And after they filibustered the voter ID bill in 2009, which a heavy majority of the voters supported, they suffered an unholy beating in 2010. The Republicans now have a super majority in the House, and the man who led the filibuster, state Rep. Jim Dunnam, was defeated. He didn’t lose just because of that filibuster, but having that on his record certainly didn’t help him.” (Link.)

The unemployed, the under-employed and regular folks trying to pay their bills aren’t likely to have a lot of love for people who (a) have jobs, (b) work at taxapayer expense, (c) get paid more money than the average taxpayer, and (d) go on strike because they don’t want to pay a dime toward their own generous benefits.

The most infuriating aspect of all this is the media's brazen hypocrisy and double standards. NEVER, EVER AGAIN listen to a liberal MSM pundit or a "progressive" bitch about "incivility," or "heated rhetoric," or "advocating violence." NEVER, EVER. They don't mean it. Or, rather, they mean it ONLY when it possibly -- even so remotely as to defy all sense of rationality -- can tar a conservative/Republican. Witness the reports on the Tea Party last year and most recently the garbage following the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. But you'll be hard pressed to see the scrutiny the Tea Party withstood put forth against the Wisconsin protesters. Not. By. A. Long. Shot.